Tony Johnston

Lizzie meets an elderly man and his companion, Cecile, at the park, but Lizzie is afraid of dogs, so she relies on her new friend to help her take things one step at a time.

Standing tall above the tree line, Sequoia stretches his ancient arms and gathers clouds to him. He watches as days, seasons, years pass by. His branches are home to owls and choirs of frogs. Beneath his broad canopy, a world grows. This is his story.

A pioneer mother lovingly stitches a beautiful quilt which warms and comforts her daughter Abigail; many years later another mother mends and patches it for her little girl.

Separated from his parents in Poland during World War II, a young Jewish boy enslaved in a concentration camp, keeps hope alive while playing Schubert on his harmonica whenever the camp's commandant orders him to play.

The beauty and spirit of Christmas resounds in the melodic chimes of a church bell in this lyrical picture book by well-known author Tony Johnston with breathtaking illustrations by watercolor artist Cheng-Khee Chee. On Christmas Eve, people bundle up in the cold and follow the sounds of the bell to gather in celebration. Creatures great-children, dogs, cats, and birds-and small stop to listen as a brass band marches through town. The poetry and imagery...

For at least 100 years, generations of barn owls have slept, hunted, called, raised their young, and glided silently above the wheat fields around an old barn.

Living in the Bloggins School boiler room isn't glamorous, but that's life for Martha Snapdragon, daughter of the beleaguered janitor. Life only gets weirder when Martha realizes bizarre events are afoot at the school. There's the dastardly dealings of evil principal Dr. Klunk and school bully Rufus. There's the dozen dancing eggs and the misbehaving dragons, property of the mysterious science teacher. And then there's the strangest thing of all:...

A 700-year-old woman and an 800-year-old man, both witches, go searching on Halloween night for the pumpkin someone snitched from them.

Each day, from September through November, a girl quietly sitting in the woods with her sketchbook glimpses forest animals seeking food in preparation for the onset of winter, from a fox sniffing the last apple to a flock of wild turkeys that finds nothing.

A childhood visit to Sardinia haunts a composer, who returns there one Christmas to repay with his music the kindness of the island's inhabitants.